


a sense of stars

by lupinely



Series: even in another time [3]
Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: F/F, happy korrasamiversary :)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-19
Updated: 2015-12-19
Packaged: 2018-05-07 12:45:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5456975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lupinely/pseuds/lupinely
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“These past few weeks have felt so long,” Asami says. “I feel like we’ll never get the chance to do something special for our anniversary, that after all of this we won’t even want to.”</p><p>“We’ll figure something out,” Korra says. “I think I have an idea.” She presses her fingertips to Asami’s shoulder, feels the warmth of her skin. “Just the two of us.”</p><p> </p><p>(Standalone, but in the same timeline as some of my other works.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	a sense of stars

**Author's Note:**

> happy one year canon korrasami

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

Asami curls some of Korra’s hair around her finger, a peculiar, faint smile at the very corners of her mouth. “It’s getting long."

“Mm.” Korra does not move, lets Asami pull her fingers through her hair without resistance. “I was thinking of cutting it.” She has let it grow out all this past year and has hardly thought much about it beyond the way it has been getting into her eyes, an annoyance. But it has grown to her shoulders.

“I could do it for you.”

“Okay,” Korra says. Neither of them moves. Korra is half in Asami’s lap and half-asleep, her head resting against Asami’s shoulder. Asami is reading a report, ostensibly working on business and in reality doing little more than paying attention to the softness of Korra’s hair and the weight of Korra’s head upon her shoulder.

“Hey,” Asami says after a long while. There is a note of considerable effort in her voice, which Korra has grown accustomed to listening for. While many things are easy for Korra to say, she has found that for Asami, many are not. “So our anniversary is coming up soon, I guess.”

Korra sits up. “Yeah,” she says; “I guess.” She has not known how to broach the subject herself and has wondered, for weeks, whether she even should—so hearing Asami reference it first is a relief, and yet the odd note in Asami’s voice remains, and Korra cannot help but wonder what else is on Asami’s mind. That is the way Asami thinks: always several things at once, always reaching for the next thought. When Korra asks her, at any moment, what she is thinking about, Asami always has to take a moment to pause, to sift through all the things going on in her mind and pick the most salient one to answer with, as if all the things in her head cannot be properly put into words. “How do you feel about it?”

Asami’s smile goes wry and beautiful, that way Korra has come to find so familiar and so endearing. “Anticipative,” she says (one word to describe no doubt the many different thoughts all in her head at once) and she leans in and kisses Korra, the soft touch of her lips.

Korra kisses back and presses her fingertips into the place between Asami’s shoulder blades. “Good,” she says, and cannot help but grin, cannot help but be excited, because she has been just as much as she has been nervous. “Good, I’m glad.” She pauses for a moment, and adds: “So what day is it, exactly?”

Asami buries her face into Korra’s shoulder and laughs so hard her shoulders shake. “Thank goodness,” she says. “I didn’t want to have to be the one to ask.”

There is substantial reason for the ambiguity, after all; everything that had happened right after Kuvira’s defeat last year had been so confusing, so muddled, so hard to parse and understand. Korra remembers most of it as an indistinct haze (much like how she remembers the beginning of her time recovering in the South Pole after Zaheer poisoned her, in fact). She and Asami, in the weeks before Varrick and Zhu Li’s wedding, had spent the majority of their time together, fallen asleep together, woken together...but had not put a name to any of what they were doing. And of course on one particular morning, Korra had awoken and looked around for Asami and found her in the bathroom, crying as she tried to put on her makeup to attend her father’s funeral, and Korra had gone in nervously and uselessly and hugged her until Asami stopped shaking, and neither of them has ever spoken about it again.

And afterwards, after the wedding, they had gone to the Spirit World together—where Korra had kissed Asami, the first time—where they had been alone again together, and happy, and horribly unspeakably nervous, and then finally in the few days after they had returned from the spirit world, Asami had come to Air Temple Island with a picnic and some treats for Naga, and they had had their first date. But they did not begin to refer to each other as the other’s girlfriend until some time yet after that.

So it was, you might say, complex. It was hard to put a single date of any form to what might be considered their anniversary. And it did not help that the anniversary of so many other things—things less welcome in remembrance—were around the same time. Korra still wakes shaking from dreams where Zaheer kills her, or poisons her again, and in these dreams she goes to the South Pole and never returns, or she returns and fails to stop Kuvira, or she returns and this time Asami’s father is not the one who dies—

And Asami does not wake shaking from nightmares, but she is an earlier riser than Korra. Often Korra, on the nights she stays at Asami’s apartment (which are more often than not), will go downstairs in the late morning, rubbing her eyes, and find Asami sitting at the table. Her coffee is cold in front of her as she stares at nothing, looks off into space as if there is something she can see that no one else can. When she hears Korra enter the room, she inevitably turns and offers a thin tired smile and tells Korra that there is coffee on the stove, and Korra takes her mug and gets Asami a fresh cup while getting some for herself.

“I don’t want it to overlap with Varrick and Zhu Li’s anniversary,” Asami says. “I think they’ll probably want to invite us to something.”

Korra experiences a momentary flash of horror. “We don’t have to have a party, right.” She has never dated anyone for this long before. She is not quite sure how it works.

“Definitely not.” Asami looks equally unnerved. She purses her lips, then looks down, then says: “I was thinking something with just us.”

Korra thinks about kissing her again and decides she is not ready for the distraction, yet. “Me too.”

Asami smiles. “All right. We’ll figure it out, then...we have time.”

“Yes,” Korra says; “loads of time,” and now she pulls Asami in and kisses her with determined purpose, and they don’t spend much time talking after that.

 

-

 

Time ends up moving more quickly than they expected.

There is a lot to do in the days preceding the one year anniversary since Kuvira attacked Republic City. Ceremonies for Korra to attend and speak at, memorial construction plans for Asami to design and approve, parties to which they are both invited. (Somber ceremonial celebrations, for one thing, and then Varrick and Zhu Li’s anniversary party, which is quite the opposite.)

And of course, in the midst of it all: it is one year now since Hiroshi died, and on the day of his death Asami gets up early in the morning, puts on some of her best clothes, and leaves before Korra wakes, though she half-rises when Asami is leaving and says, “Need me?” Asami shakes her head and brushes her hand over Korra’s forehead, gently, and then she is gone.

Korra lies there for a long while, unable to get back to sleep despite the early hour. There is a heaviness in her limbs, a numbness born of concern and helplessness and a grief of her own for the things that happened here in this city a year ago. She lies there in silence, in the cheap plain sheets of Asami’s bed—Asami’s apartment is well furnished but not ornately so, and she never spends any money on herself in the name of simple extravagance. Where someone might expect to find silk sheets on her bed there are slightly threadbare cotton ones, and in the place of the pristine cleanliness that is indicative of Asami’s bearing and manner in the rest of her life, there is instead the clutter and messiness that Asami only allows herself to have in this tiny apartment that is wholly and completely her own. The apartment is rented and paid for with only the money she has herself made, and none that was left to her after her father’s imprisonment and later passing. The mansion where she had lived when Korra first met her is still in her family name yet owned by the company now, and as far as Korra knows, Asami spends as little time there as possible. Korra wonders if that is where she has gone now.

Finally, Korra gets out of bed and rinses her mouth and face and pads around the bedroom for a moment, contemplative, tired. She paces, back and forth, deliberating—and then makes up her mind, and goes to the drawer in the bureau that Asami has designated as Korra’s, and opens it and pulls out a slightly wrinkled roll of parchment that was hidden in the back.

She holds it for a moment. She has been wondering what to give Asami for their anniversary—and she is not certain whether this is a good idea or not. She thinks maybe something else would be better, but it feels wrong not to do this, as well. She unrolls the parchment.

It is a portrait of Asami’s family—her father, her mother, and Asami in the middle. Asami is young, younger than ten years old most likely, and Yasuko is beaming. Even Hiroshi looks happy.

A few months ago—Korra cannot remember when, exactly, but it had been after one of the times she and Asami had gone to have dinner with Korra’s parents—Asami had come home to this apartment, and the parchment had still been hanging, encased in glass, upon the wall in the entryway. When she turned to hang her jacket, she had brushed against the portrait—and Korra was not sure, but she had thought then and perhaps thought now that there had been a sense of purpose in Asami’s movements when the portrait fell and the glass shattered and Korra stood there in stunned silence.

“Don’t move,” Asami said finally. “I’ll sweep up the glass.” She carefully made her way past the mess and went to get the dustpan. Korra had stood there staring at the portrait on the floor, surrounded by glass pieces. At dinner, her parents had turned to each other and smiled and Korra had glimpsed, briefly, something like grief in Asami’s face, something like anger.

Asami returned and swept up the broken glass in a business-like manner, without regard for the fallen portrait. “Do you want me to pick that up for you?” Korra had asked, bending over to lift the portrait.

“Oh, I don’t care,” Asami had said breezily. “You can put it in the trash, too.”

“Asami....” Korra said, but Asami did not listen, did not spare a glance when she took the dustpan of broken glass away. Korra had deliberated, and looked down at the portrait—at the smiling Sato family, in a decade long past—and then made up her mind and rolled it up and stuck it in the drawer in her room without Asami knowing, determined not to let Asami throw it away simply because she was upset right now, even if she were upset for good reason.

And so now here Korra stands: alone in Asami’s bedroom, looking down at this piece of Sato family history that is not hers and yet which she has become the temporary caretaker of, barefoot and cold in the chill early morning, wondering where Asami has gone and when she will be back and whether this is a good idea or if she is just simply making yet another mistake, yet another wrongdoing. She could ask Bolin for his advice, or Opal, or even Jinora, but somehow Korra is reluctant to drag Asami’s personal grief out into light again, the way this week’s ceremonies and memorials have done continuously. (Half a dozen reporters have already approached Asami, asking, _Miss Sato, will you be doing anything to commemorate your father this week during the celebrations?_ as if that weren’t a terrible thing to ask someone; as if Asami were sure, even now, whether her father should be commemorated after the total tally of everything he had done for and done to Republic City; as if Asami were the sort to be that vulnerable in public, in front of who do not know her nor even really care what the answer means to her, merely what it means to the city, what it means for the headlines of tomorrow’s papers. Asami had said nothing to any of them and Korra, angry and tired and pissed off, had shoved them away and ended up in the headlines of the next day's papers instead. Asami had read them over the table at breakfast, and nearly smiled.)

Finally Korra decides. She rolls up the parchment, puts it in her bag, leaves a note for Asami telling her when she’ll be back, and sets off for Air Temple Island.

 

-

 

When Korra returns later around dinnertime, the apartment is dark. She lets herself in, thinking that perhaps Asami has not yet been back or that she went out again already. She sets what she is holding against the wall in the entryway and goes into the kitchen, where she turns on the light.

Asami is there, sitting alone at the table, still in the fine clothing she wore when she left early that morning. She looks exhausted: her hair is in a loose ponytail, strands of hair getting into her eyes, and her hands, both empty, lie motionless on the table. She looks up after a moment and sees Korra.

“Oh,” she says. “Hi. I thought maybe you were staying at your place tonight.”

‘Your place’ being the living quarters on Air Temple Island, but Korra only spends about a third of her time there these days. “Didn’t you get my note?” Korra goes over to the counter and picks it up.

“No,” Asami says; “sorry.” She draws her hand over her mouth, then her eyes, and the back of her hand comes away damp.

“Asami?” Korra asks, uncertain. Asami shakes her head, says nothing, and so Korra moves across the small room towards her and pulls her to her feet and then into a hug.

“I should have gone with you today,” Korra says. “I’m sorry.”

“I wanted to be alone.” Asami’s voice is muffled. She is not crying, but she has pressed her face to Korra’s neck and is standing very still. “I went to the house—everything is the same as I left it, but so dusty.... It looks like a museum, like no one ever lived in it before. I lit the candles at my father’s shrine, near my mother’s. I couldn’t stop thinking about how I wanted to do more and couldn’t, because I don’t know what he deserves.”

Korra: helpless, sad. “It’s not about what he deserves anymore,” she says. “It’s about what you deserve.”

Asami’s hands tighten around Korra’s waist. “I deserve to have my parents here with me,” she mumbles, and Korra does not know what to say to that.

She kisses Asami’s forehead. “I got something for you. Or made. Or, I don’t know. But it’s for you. Hold on.” She extricates herself from Asami, suddenly cold, and goes into the entryway and picks up what she had made earlier today on Air Temple Island: a sturdy, handsome wooden frame for the portrait of the Sato family, which Tenzin had helped her set upon it. She comes back into the kitchen, somewhat shyly, and turns the portrait around so that Asami can see it.

Asami says nothing: just looks, for a long moment. Then her eyes fill suddenly with tears. 

“I thought you threw it out,” she says. “That’s what I told you to do.” Her voice is thick and unsteady.

“I didn’t think you meant it,” Korra offers as justification.

Asami shakes her head. “I didn’t,” she says, tremulously. She steps forward and takes the portrait and looks at it for a long moment, taking in both of her parents’ faces as if she will never be able to look at them enough: as if she will never be satisfied. “Thank you,” she says when she can manage it.

“’Course,” Korra says, somewhat bashfully, and Asami’s smile in response is enough.

 

-

 

The next morning when Korra wakes, Asami insists on cutting her hair before she showers. “How short do you want it? As short as you had it last year?”

The length of Korra’s hair, which is now resting lightly on her shoulders, feels familiar and strange all at once. Sometimes she dreams about having long hair again, and she’s not sure whether she misses it or not. “I don’t know.”

“I liked it,” Asami says. “I like it now, too. And I liked it before.”

“So helpful,” Korra says, and Asami kisses her on the shoulder.

It feels somehow wrong to cut her hair exactly the same way that she had cut it last year at this time—when she had been going through so much and struggling to reconnect with so many lost parts of herself. It’s just hair, she tells herself; it doesn’t mean anything. Or not much, at least.

“Not as short,” she decides, finally. “But get it out of my eyes.” She can always cut it again after the new year. She wants to go shorter, even; but not now.

“Sure thing,” Asami says, and gets to work. When she is done, there is a pile of Korra’s hair on the floor at their feet, and loose strands all over Korra and Asami both. When Korra gets in the shower to rinse off, Asami joins her.

Afterwards Korra gets dressed and combs out her neatly cut hair. There is another memorial ceremony that she has been invited to attend; but the week is almost over, and the ceremonies with it.

“Want me to go with you?” Asami has put on her pajamas again—unusual for her—but is looking through her drawers for something to wear.

“Only if you want to deal with all those stuffy businesspeople,” Korra says, and Asami makes a face. And the reporters. “You stay here and relax, it won’t take long.”

“Hm,” Asami says. “Okay. I have a lot of reading to catch up on.”

“Or,” Korra says, “you could relax. Just a thought.”

“Reading is relaxing,” Asami says, serenely.

The ceremony is somber and not altogether well-suited, Korra thinks, to the many emotions that people in the city must still be feeling regarding Kuvira’s attack last year—and Unalaq’s several years before, and Amon’s the year before that. There is a great degree of suppressed emotion in this city, in the people who live here, and these formal memorials, while they have their place, have done little in Korra’s opinion to create a dialogue about what happened and how to heal in the aftermath beyond it.

Then again, that is something she thinks a lot about anyway: healing. What comes after. The way things fall apart and how much time, and effort, and patience it takes to piece them back together if you can. Sometimes you can’t.

It’s one of the things she wishes she could talk about with Aang. The reminder of her lost connection to her former selves creates a pang of regret and grief. But it is an old pain now; she has grown accustomed to it. It has been slow to heal over, this wound, and she is not certain that it ever will completely, but it does not consume her as it once did. She has more pressing things to think of now, and others to whom she can turn for advice.

But still, she misses him. (What does it mean, to be the Avatar alone?)

 

-

 

When Korra gets back to Asami’s apartment around mid-afternoon, she finds Asami asleep in bed, her hair haloed around her face as she lies on her side, half-curled inwards on herself. Her hands are empty and loose and grasp weakly at the blankets. Korra kicks off her shoes and shimmies out of her pants and slips quietly into bed behind Asami, being careful not to wake her, and puts one arm over her waist.

Asami stirs. “You’re cold.”

“Sorry.” Usually Korra runs hot, but the air had been brisk outside, and her feet and hands are colder than usual. She presses her palm firmly against Asami’s side and Asami makes a noise of disgust and rolls over and seems to want to push Korra away and instead ends up curled against her.

“This is good,” Korra says. “This is good relaxing, I’m proud of you.”

“Quiet, Avatar girl,” Asami mumbles, and Korra bites back a smile and does as she is told.

“How was the ceremony?” Asami asks later once she has woken fully.

Korra is now feeling tired and lazy, and she is braiding some of Asami’s hair idly. “Boring,” she says. “Bolin was there, though.”

“Mm,” Asami hums. “Good.” Suddenly she sits up. “Oh, I was going to have this ready when you got here, but I fell asleep.” She goes to her dresser and pulls something out of the top drawer. She comes back to the bed and puts it in Korra’s hands. “Here,” she says, and there’s a rosiness to her cheeks, a slight blush; “I made this for you.”

It is a small wooden box, elegantly carved of deep dark wood. The edges are smooth and pleasant to the touch, and for a moment that is all that Korra does, and then she finally opens it on its silent, perfect hinges. Inside is a system of gears and shining metal, intricate and complex and somehow beautiful even on their own.

“Here.” Asami twists a handle on the back of the small box, and all the gears inside move slowly as she winds them up, and when she lets go they run forward again without resistance, and a series of clear light notes emanate from inside the box.

Korra listens to the melody, taking it in. It sounds familiar and yet she knows she has never heard it before; it is a beautiful little song, and the music box produces a strong range of tones. Korra has never seen or heard anything like it.

Slowly, the music fades. “It’s beautiful,” Korra says. “You made it?”

“Yes.” Asami hesitates, then adds: “I didn’t know what to get you. And then I didn’t know when to give it to you, and after what you did for me yesterday, I just thought....”

She trails off. On the wall above her dresser hangs the portrait of her family in its new frame.

“Thank you,” Korra says humbly.

“You really like it?”

“How could I not?” Korra asks, and winds up the box again and sets it to the side while the music plays and kisses Asami again.

“These past few weeks have felt so long,” Asami says. “I feel like we’ll never get the chance to do something special for our anniversary, that after all of this we won’t even want to.”

“We’ll figure something out,” Korra says. “I think I have an idea.” She presses her fingertips to Asami’s shoulder, feels the warmth of her skin. “Just the two of us.”

“Okay,” Asami says. After a moment, she adds, “I love you,” and Korra bites her lip hard to keep from smiling.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Asami says. “Don’t be an asshole.” And Korra leans down and kisses her.

 

-

 

The Spirit Wilds in Republic City had healed faster, following the destruction of the previous year, than the rest of the city. Some of the townspeople, in fact, swear up and down that the vines have regrown in the perfect position to support the walls of their new houses, or that they now provide cool shade where they had not previously, or that they have regrown in other beneficial ways, in harmony with the city, as they had not when first originally introduced after the Harmonic Convergence. Most people insist that this is nonsense, that the vines and the spirits who live among them either do not care about human goings-on or would not be able to help even if they did. Korra, however, is inclined to agree with the believers: she has walked among the wilds many times in the past year and felt their benevolence, the change in the atmosphere that had once been oppressive and restrictive and inimical. The light among the wilds has even changed, a different sort of color: once dark and murky green, now there is clear yellow sunlight, and the bright green undersides of the vines and their leaves. Korra often goes among the wilds now when she needs some peace; she goes running here, because she has started running whenever her head feels too tight, her chest too heavy, and it helps to clear her mind. She is sure the wilds play a not insignificant role in this. The hollow crater around the spirit portal is changed as well; not much can grow there, and what does is distorted and strange, but the vines are resilient and of the spirit world, anyway, and so perhaps best suited to this uneasy liminal space between the worlds.

Sometimes Korra remembers lightning, or suffocating; mostly she remembers metal, the taste of metal (the taste of blood); she remembers hitting the ground hard, and all the bones in her head rattling. She remembers watching Hiroshi die and feeling guilty for being grateful that it was him and not Asami who had been left behind in the mecha suit. She remembers the portal opening, the way it split the reality of space and time and how, for a moment, she was worried she might fall through both into a place where there was neither, and she would be alone, and then the portal was open and she was standing in the spirit world and Kuvira was gasping and they were both alive, and neither alone.

They pick their way through the ruins that are not ruins, the landscape that is beautiful and broken and changed, as they are, as all of them are. Korra keeps reaching out and grasping for Asami’s hand whenever the terrain gets rougher, seeking that lifeline that she has come so strongly to depend on. It has not been a year since they were here last; several times Korra has had to come to the portal to make sure everything was all right, and once or twice she has gone through into the spirit world. Asami has joined her to check on the portal but declined to go into the spirit world itself. A strange place, she says of it; it knows what is not its own.

Korra had not asked what Asami meant by that, and still is not quite certain, but content to let Asami keep her secrets and truths for now.

And it has not been a quite exactly year, either, since they stepped through it together—a year and some days, now. All the city’s memorial ceremonies are over; Varrick and Zhu Li’s anniversary party is well past.

The exact day does not matter. It is impossible to determine, anyway—for Korra at least—when exactly her feelings for Asami had first turned from friendship to something else; something that had not replaced those prior feelings but only strengthened them, used them as a foundation. Asami is tight-lipped about herself but Korra knows their friendship had already started to shift before she left for the South Pole four years ago; it had just taken time for the both of them to realize it. Time that they had deserved and used well; time now that Korra is grateful for, just as she is grateful for all the time ahead of her.

Small spirits, pink and blue and yellow, pass them by the sky above, giggling, laughing, trailing purple lights. Asami squeezes Korra’s fingers. Her hair is pulled back, a few stray strands framing her face, and her green eyes are bright and happy and alert and she looks beautiful, just as beautiful as the first time Korra saw her and every time after.

Asami sees Korra watching her, and her mouth twists. “What?”

“Shh." Korra tucks some loose dark hair behind Asami’s ear. Asami makes a face at her.

The wilds are gentle, soft, and deep, and before long they have nearly reached the spirit portal, shining brilliant and yellow, the color of sunlight, in the center of the crater. Korra and Asami stand side by side and look at it for a moment together.

Asami says, quietly, “I was so nervous, the last time. You reached out and took my hand and I didn’t know how to think anymore.”

Korra thinks, neither did I. She thinks, I thought you might pull away, might turn away, but you never did. She says, “You did okay.”

“I knew where we were going.” Asami sounds determined to speak her mind, determined to make herself, in this important moment, known. “Where you and I were headed. I knew and I wanted it more than anything else in the world. Thank you." She meets Korra's gaze. "For taking me with you.”

Korra takes Asami’s other hand and pulls her close. She can see Asami’s individual eyelashes, the dark green and gold flecks in her eyes. “I’m not taking you anywhere,” she says firmly. “We go there together.”

Asami’s expression is tender and hesitant. She looks sad and hopeful and nervous and happy all at once, and Korra thinks that she understands. She laces her fingers in Asami’s, who returns the gesture with confidence born of familiarity accrued within the past year, which has passed so quickly and yet Korra can remember and hold onto every specific moment.

They have not packed anything; they are not planning to stay long this time. Just long enough to have some peace, finally: long enough so that the earth may have time for them, and the oceans and skies.

“I love you,” Korra says.

Asami smiles.

When they turn to face the portal, they step through together. Asami is the one to pull Korra close this time, to thread her fingers through Korra’s hair and lean in to press her mouth over Korra’s, to kiss her gentle and true as the stained-glass lights in the portal above dissipate and scatter like stars.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
